The announcement of the project was headed by Morocco’s Housing Minister last month. Some 20,000 homes will be built by 2016 and the government is already scouting at thousands of hectares of available land.

One developer, have announced that about 3,680 homes will be build this year while more than a dozen other contracts are also in positioned.

Morocco’s middle class, who makes up more than half of the country’s population, has suffered from a lack of affordable property for years, a Casablanca property advisor noted.

Today’s property prices have put housing more or less out of people’s reach, remarked Karima Attamri, an accountant for a freight forwarding firm.

In the 2014 Finance Act, the prices for middle class housing were set at 7,200 dirhams per square metre for areas ranging between 80 and 150 square metres.

Small and medium-sized cities landed the first development projects. The new homes in El Jadida, Agadir, Safi, Oujda, Benslimane, Fez and Kenitra are expected to become available next year.